F**king Mondays: Poll Results Are In, Identity Tightrope, And Decolonizer Vs Colonizer Myths

You really are a sweary bunch.

Your average Banter reader

Sweary readers

Last week’s poll revealed our readers to be an uncouth bunch, fond of foul language and extremely dismissive of family friendly terminology:

Results from the poll are in!

If you don’t like swear words in Banter articles, you only have yourselves to blame…

Londoners stand against antisemitism, the hard left not so much

Given the shocking rise in antisemitic hate crimes around the world, this is extremely heartening to see. From the BBC:

Tens of thousands of people have marched through central London at a demonstration against antisemitism.

Organisers estimated 100,000 took part in the first march of its kind since the Israel-Gaza war began, including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The rally comes amid a steep rise in hate crime, especially against the capital's Jewish community…

The large crowd gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice and made its way along Whitehall to Parliament Square, where a rally was held.

Placards bearing slogans like "Shoulder to shoulder with British Jews" and "Never again is now" were seen being carried by those taking part.

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis told the crowd at Parliament Square British Jews "will not be intimidated" by antisemitism.

I’ve seen a number of left wing identity politics militants decry pro-Israel/Jewish marches because they are mostly “white”:

Think about that for a moment. To the radical left, Jews can’t march against violent racism towards Jews because of their skin color. This is madness and not liberal in any meaningful sense of the word.

The politics of “decolonization”

Not to harp on about the politics of the identity politics left, but their simplification of history and weaponization of “colonialism” really does need to be checked. Take the story of actress Melissa Barrera, a Mexican actress dropped from the movie Scream VII over her reposting of what some deemed anti-Israeli/antisemitic Instagram stories. Reported Deadline:

A month ago, Barrera posted on her IG story a placard that read “I too come from a colonized country” with a Mexican flag logo. “Palestine WILL be free” it continued to read with an italicized quote: “they tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.”

There are a couple of things worth mentioning here. Firstly, I don’t believe Barrera should have been fired for her posts. Barrera said nothing remotely antisemitic or hateful, and her posts were largely about promoting peace. That being said, Barrera did repeat historic inaccuracies and conflated issues that aren’t even remotely related.

Anyone remotely aware of Israel’s history knows that it is not a colonial power, or related in any way to European colonialism. The state was founded by the United Nations in 1948 under resolution 181. The resolution divided what was Britain's former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states, and was voted on by the international community. Furthermore, the Ashkenazi Jews who had moved to mandatory Palestine in the preceding years were more often than not desperately poor, and fleeing violent pogroms and persecution. So hardly the colonial elites looking to subjugate poor brown people many on the left seem to believe they are.

The concept of “colonizer” versus “colonized” nations is also reaching breathtaking levels of historic ignorance. If we regard modern Mexico as a “colonized country” because of what the Spanish did 500 years ago, then we could apply those same standards to Britain, which was brutally colonized by the Normans in 1066. I do not wish to minimize the horrific history of the Spanish Conquistadors, but at this point the modern population of Mexico is so genetically mixed that up to 93% have mixed Native American, Spanish and African heritage. Likewise in Britain, the modern population is a mix of European migrant and invading populations (notably the much earlier Anglo-Saxons).

The history of Spanish colonialism is of course still relevant to modern Mexico, as it is in modern Britain where descendants of Norman invaders dominate elite professions. My point is that it isn’t useful or accurate to ascribe nations “colonizer” or “colonized” status given almost every nation on earth is the product of colonialism in one form or another.

Every so often I find catch myself falling into the Oppression Olympics trap where my virtue is tied to how much my ancestors suffered (this often happens when reading or watching anything on the Holocaust). I then have to remind myself that I have mixed Ashkenazi, British, Irish and German DNA. So you know, oppressed and oppressor.

The gender identity tightrope

The left has an extremely difficult tightrope to navigate when it comes to the issue of gender identity, but there does appear to be some positive developments in the UK where the Labour Party is taking a very sensible and balanced approach. From the Guardian:

Allies of Keir Starmer claim he has the backing of Labour’s grassroots over his stance on sex- and gender-based rights after a new poll of members suggested they support the party’s updated position on the issue.

The party shifted its stance in the summer, abandoning its support for self-identification – which would allow people to legally change gender without a medical diagnosis. It announced the move alongside support for making the process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate far simpler and less invasive, as well as continuing to ensure some single-sex services and places could only be accessed by biological women.

Generally speaking, this is a topic I stay well away from, but I do think it is important that Democrats take note. Regardless of what you think about gender identity/the use of pronouns etc, the left does need to take political realities into account. While most Americans want to protect transgendered people, most also believe gender is assigned at birth. Views on this aren’t softening either. Pew Research Center polling shows the belief that gender is assigned at birth is increasing over time, meaning traditional definitions of gender are more important than the left might like to believe.

See you next week!

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